Sunday, December 28, 2014

On the desk in front of me sit three
small stacks of pictures: tree elves, Jadeites, and humans. The pictures of
tree elves and Jadeites are photocopied from books that I took home with me;
you don’t need a card to check out books at the Grand Greenwood Library, but
you do need to have them signed out at the front desk. The librarian refused to
sign the books out to me. She just sat there gawking as if I was an unusual
animal (and to her, I suppose I was) and clasped the books protectively as if I
might have been thinking about stealing or burning them. Apple Blossom had to
sign them out for me.

Tree elves and Jadeites have the
same skin tones from milk-white to rosy pink, small builds with petite frames,
pointed ears (though the tree elves’ ears are slightly larger and more pointed),
and clean, unblemished faces. The Jadeites’ hair ranges in shades from golden
blonde to greenish blue, and the tree elves sport the more conventional colors
of blonde, brown, and auburn red. I had learned that prolonged access and
exposure to the jade essences caused the change in hair color, as well as a
slightly greenish tinge on the skin of Jadeites that did not exist in the tree
elves. The tree elves’ eyes are nearly universally blue, and the Jadeites’ eyes
are nearly universally green. The eyes of a Jadeite are large and round like
perfectly cut gems, while the eyes of a tree elf are smaller and more teardrop
or almond shaped.

In comparison to humans, both
Jadeites and tree elves have two arms, two legs, five fingers and toes, heads
of hair, and distinctly human facial features. Jadeites and tree elves are
short, with willowy builds—if you can compare the build of a human to a tree
trunk, then you can compare the build of a Jadeite or a tree elf to a flower
stalk. The rounded five fingers of a Jadeite compare more to a human’s than the
gangly, pencil-shaped digits of a tree elf. The arms and legs of a tree elf are
slightly longer than those of a Jadeite, their feet are pointy and oddly diamond-shaped,
and their hair is stringy and unkempt in comparison to the more well-kept
hairstyles of Jadeites. The Jadeites and tree elves bear the same heart-shaped
faces, though the tree elves’ chins are pointed slightly.

The Jadeites are certainly closer in
appearance to humans. It doesn’t surprise me, considering the tree elves were
older and less evolved and still likely flaunted the characteristics of their
dryad ancestors. But Jadeites have our hair, fingers, toes, noses, eyes,
mouths, teeth, and language capabilities. Somehow, I don’t feel that is a
coincidence…

7:15 PM

The books explained why Jadeites
fear a creature so similar to themselves. It isn’t our appearance that
frightens them, but our tendency to be horrid to anything that isn’t one of us.
I certainly know better than to go
rampaging through a forest full of elves, beating and destroying everything in
sight. None of the people I know would ever behave so despicably (or at least,
I hope not!). But the Jadeites in
general possess a sort of childlike naivety that leaves them vulnerable to the
other, much less desirable sort of people. I always knew that such a sort of
people existed, hopefully far, far away from my little speck of the world. But
I never dreamed that there could have been enough of them to taint the
Jadeites’ perception of the entire human race for decades. And yes, it has been
decades—centuries, even. It wasn’t only recent texts and children’s picture
books that depicted us in such ways. There were plenty of old books written
over a hundred years ago in that library, featuring the “tan-skin beasts” in
all their infamy. There has to be a reason, hasn’t there? What could have
possibly provoked these hostilities? As much as the Jadeites swear by it, I
refuse to believe that there was no provocation at all—it would go against
everything I was taught about human nature. Could the Jadeites have tainted the
relationship with humans, or was it the other way around? Did it begin with the
Jadeites, or with the tree elves before them, or even longer ago? Could there
have been a war, a misunderstanding turned into a conflict, a communication
gone horribly wrong? What kind of royal family did the Jadeites have when it
began? Did it have anything at all to do with the striking similarities?

There is just so much that I don’t
know, and I feel as though that maze full of books couldn’t possibly have all
of the answers.

10:17 PM

This is the first time I have
visited the magnolia archway at night. The Grand Elder Guardian is absent from
his web, which glistens in the starlight along with the magnolia leaves. The
white blossoms that had adorned the trees the day I met Apple Blossom are long
gone. It’s rather dull, but a peaceful place for thinking when there are too
many things on the mind.

My tag says that I am the fifth
human to come by the Greenwood, and Apple Blossom had told me on that first
day that only one of the other four had returned, and they had been deterred by
the Grand Elder Guardian. What if they, like me, had not been deterred? What if
they had gotten through, or ran into Apple Blossom? Would they have treated her
with kindness and become her friend, or would they have…no, I refuse to think
about that.

An awful thought has been lingering
in my mind all day, and I know I won’t get any sleep until I get it out. What
if publishing this diary the way I want to ends up attracting the kind of
people to the Greenwood that the Jadeites—and I—dread? What if
publicizing the story of the Greenwood to a wide audience ends up contributing to
its destruction? Of course I would try to pass it off as fiction, but that
wouldn’t stop people—especially children—from getting curious. How many
children waited for their Hogwarts letters or spent Christmas Eve waiting for
the Polar Express to show up at their doors? How many people traveled to the
nothing-special city of Forks, Washington simply because Twilight told them that Bella and Edward live there? How many
tourists swarm forests, lakes, parks, and villages around the world, hoping to
catch a glimpse of some mythical creature that dwells there according to a
story? Even the people who know that stories are only stories, and don’t really
believe (or at least tell themselves that they don’t) tend to take part in
order to experience some of the magic. The fact of the matter is that I can
pass it off as fiction all I want, but it won’t stop anybody who’s really keen
on traipsing through the forest hunting for Jadeites.

My diary contains a truly wonderful
book, one that I’ve already read over and over and enjoyed every word of. It
just fascinates me how much of a real, viable story this diary turned out to be
long before that was my intention. But still, I am beginning to think that it is
best if I never publish it. As the only human entrusted with the Jadeites’
friendship and their information, it’s my duty to protect them from any
“tan-skin beasts.” Their protection is so much more important than anything I
could get from publishing their story, so this is how it is going to be.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

(I have no clue why the font has shrunk. It's the normal font size I always use, I have it set to normal, I've tried bolding it, resizing it...nothing works. Sorry about that...) The
Diary of Miss Aidyn Hall: author, mentor, researcher

July
27

7:00 PM

The Picture Books

When I met up with Apple Blossom at
the magnolia archway, the disappointment in her eyes told me that things were
not going to go the way I’d planned. “Uh-oh,” I said. “What happened?”

“I was only able to get one person
to join our research group,” Apple Blossom said with a disappointed sigh.

“Oh! That’s not so bad!” I was relieved
that she had gotten any volunteers at all. “Just one person is better than none!
So who is our generous volunteer?” Right then, Wildflower sprung out from
behind a holly bush, holding on tightly to her treasured diary. How had I not
noticed her there before? “It’s me!” she cried, bouncing on her toes. “It’s me,
it’s me!” She ran over to me and stood at my feet like a soldier reporting for
duty, smiling hopefully. I smiled back. “Somehow I knew that you would join us,”
I said. “Welcome to our research team, Miss Wildflower!” I was happy that she
would be working with us and I was proud of her for volunteering, but at the
same time I was disappointed that she was the only one who had. She was only
five years old and her abilities were very limited. The unfortunate truth was
that there just wouldn’t be much for her to do, and the only assignments I
could think of for her were meager pittances. Still, I was willing to take what
I could get—after all, we could have gotten zero volunteers. But things were
certainly not going to go as I had planned.

“Wildflower, dear,” I said, “is it
okay if Apple Blossom and I talk privately for just a moment?”

“What does that mean?” asked
Wildflower.

“It means that I would like to tell
her something that’s only for her to hear,” I told her. “Will you let me do
that? You can write in your diary for a moment while I do.”

“Okay.” Wildflower returned to the holly bush
to sit down beside it and write. I gave her an approving smile and pulled Apple
Blossom aside. “What is she able to do?” I asked.

“She can’t really do anything,” Apple Blossom
said concernedly. “I could teach her a little bit about note-taking,” I
suggested. “She can’t really write yet, but she knows how to formulate ideas.” But
Apple Blossom shook her head. “You’ve got to help me change the others’ minds,”
she said. “That’s your job for today.”

“They’re frightened,” said Apple
Blossom. “That’s the only reason they won’t do it.”

“They’re frightened of me?” I asked, alarmed.

“Oh, no, not of you!” said Apple
Blossom. “They’re frightened of what they might find out.”

“I can understand that,” I said,
“but I have a feeling that learning the truth would make them feel better about
it.”

Apple Blossom gave me a hard look
then, a look that meant, “Aidyn, you’re wrong.” The truth was that they didn’t
want to know the truth. The truth might shatter the perceptions they had that
had become facts so long before now. If the Jadeites and the humans had any
connection, they didn’t want to know about it. Jadeites were Jadeites and humans
were humans, and if anything at all indicated that they were anything more than
two phenomenally different creatures, they didn’t want to hear it. Nothing would change their minds. Apple
Blossom had given me an impossible task. “Apple Blossom,” I said, “I
respectfully request that you give me a different job for today. What if I were
to be your research assistant?”

“What would you do then?” asked
Apple Blossom.

“I’ll find the books you need,” I
explained, “and I’ll take notes, write down page numbers and titles, make
citations…things like that.”

“Are you sure we can’t convince the
others to help?” she asked with a sigh.

“The small tasks,” I said. “She can
put things away and carry books and papers and things.”

Apple Blossom looked very unsure
about it all, but she finally said, “All right,” with a sort of uneasy shrug. I
waved Wildflower over, and the three of us set out for the Grand Greenwood
Library. The soldiers met with us at the bridge, and that was something
Wildflower was afraid of. She whimpered and hid behind my legs, and I could
feel her trembling. They had kept out of sight the day Apple Blossom and her
friends had gone off in search of the “shekrumseh,” but today they towered over
Wildflower—a few of them were human sized—and their armor gleamed in the sun
like the exoskeletons of giant green beetles. I found it to be in incredibly
poor taste for these soldiers to clank around behind us when we had a young
child with us. Of course she was
going to be scared! They had kept out of sight before, and they should keep out
of sight again. But, of course, they weren’t going anywhere, and I had only
myself to blame for that. I held out my hand for Wildflower, and when she took
it I could feel her shaking. “It’s all right, Wildflower,” I said, giving her
hand a squeeze. She moved closer to me, and every so often she glanced over her
shoulder at the soldiers, keeping an eye on them as they tried to do for me.

The Grand Greenwood Library gave us
a welcome release from the soldiers’ all-seeing eyes. They must have picked up
on how much they had frightened Wildflower, as they didn’t even bother to peer in
at us through the windows (which would have set her off in a bad, bad way). We
set down our equipment: my messenger bag, notebooks, bookmarks, and pencil
case, Apple Blossom’s leafy green notebooks and matching tree-bark pencils, and
Wildflower’s diary and pen. I asked Apple Blossom, “Can you name some of the
picture books about humans?” It was as good a place to start as any.

“I can name one,” Wildflower piped
up.

“Go ahead, Wildflower.”

“The
Beast on Two Legs,” she said, and I had to laugh. It sounded like a cheesy B-movie
from the 1940s. “All right,” I said through my giggles, “what about you, Apple
Blossom?”

“Well…” She looked up at the
ceiling. “There’s The Menace of the
Outskirts, Humans: Creatures of Destruction, The Tan-Skin Beasts…” I wrote
all of these down as she listed them off, but I couldn’t help but chuckle to
myself as I did. They were the cheesiest-sounding book titles I had ever heard.
I mean, “Tan-Skin Beasts?” Honestly? Well,
these five titles told me that to the Jadeites, we humans really were nothing but
unpredictable, menacing, destructive beasts. And yet, I wasn’t treated like a
beast at all. They certainly didn’t trust me, and they didn’t view me as a
friend or a welcome guest (with the exception of Apple Blossom and Wildflower,
of course). My sticky fingers and insatiable curiosity hadn’t done anything to
help that. But the Jadeites were amicable enough to me. Wildflower’s parents
obviously approved of their daughter’s association with me enough to keep
allowing it. The king and queen allowed me to continue visiting with Apple
Blossom, so long as it was done under the watchful eyes of the soldiers. Even
with my restrictions, I was given a considerable amount of the Greenwood to explore and experience. It was certainly
not the way that most would treat a dangerous beast. I knew that I had Apple
Blossom to thank for most of this, and I felt a surge of warmth and gratitude
for my friend.

“That’s all that I need for now,” I
told Apple Blossom. “Can you tell me where to find these books?”

“Well, do you want fiction, or…”
Apple Blossom stopped herself from finishing that sentence. “You know, it’s
probably best if I just show you. Come on.” She got up from her chair and
headed off into the maze of books. “Come on, Wildflower,” I said. “I need you
to carry some books for me.” She appeared at my side almost instantly.

Two of the books were found in the
same section, a section full of brightly illustrated picture books with boldly
written titles in large print. They were the kind of books that you would find
in the children’s section of any library. “This is The Tan-Skin Beasts,” said Apple Blossom, handing a book to me. I
looked over the book’s cover. The title was written in an urgent shade of red
and hovered directly over a detailed illustration of three people: a man, a
woman, and a child. Their facial expressions were blank, and except for the
swords and spears they were carrying (even the child held a weapon), they
seemed perfectly ordinary. Their skin was the same creamy color as my own, but
in comparison to the Jadeites who were all pearl-pink and paper-white, it could
be considered tan. Whoever had illustrated this book must have seen humans
before. I had expected us to be depicted as some kind of exaggerated horror
movie monsters.

After some more searching, we found The Beast on Two Legs. This cover
featured a towering man with biceps big enough to rip a tree in half. In one
hand he held a lit match and in the other he carried an axe. In the background
was a forest that had been set ablaze. “I don’t know anyone who looks like
this,” I said as I handed both books to Wildflower. Now that I had seen two
different interpretations of humans (both labeled “beasts”), I was more curious
than ever to see exactly what it was that made us so scary.

We returned to our table, Wildflower
dutifully set the books down, and I opened up The Tan-Skin Beasts. “Do you need me to read it for you?” Apple
Blossom asked. “Not right now,” I answered. “I just want to look at the
pictures.” I could tell that she didn’t want to read me any book that called me
a beast.

Those pictures didn’t tell me
anything about a possible connection between Jadeites and humans, but it did
tell me everything about “the tan-skin beasts”; there were full-color
illustrations of humans partaking in such acts as gleefully cutting down trees,
burning up forests, and brutally attacking Jadeites. There was a picture of two
grown men kicking around and pulling the hair of two little Jadeite girls.
There was a small group of Jadeites looking mournfully out on an area of forest
that had been charred and littered with plastic bottles and balled up papers.
There was a human woman clubbing a Jadeite woman over the head, a sadistic
smile painted on her face. This is what Jadeites expected of humans. These were
the monsters that Jadeite children were terrified of—and until I quickly proved
otherwise, they feared that I was one of them. I was so trusted in comparison
to the rest of my kind because I was a human and yet not one of these monsters.
And the slightest hint of evidence that I was not as angelically good as I led
on—the thievery of five jade stones—resulted in a league of soldiers keeping
sharp eyes out for any signs of escalation.

But this isn’t what bothered me. What
bothered me was that things like this had actually happened. They had to have
happened, in order to give the authors of books like these any material. It was
nearly universally accepted by the Jadeites that humans were fearsome monsters,
and in order for that to become a universal constant that was documented and
depicted in books, some humans had to have made their way into Jadeite
Greenwoods and acted like fearsome monsters.

Some Greenwoods had been completely
trashed, or even burned, by careless people.

Some people had encountered some
Jadeites and responded by attacking and brandishing weapons at them.

Some people had found it appropriate
to beat a Jadeite child.

For some reason, it had never
occurred to me that there must have been a reason for the Jadeites to fear
humans the way that they did. It had never occurred to me that humans had done something to establish their place
as the bogeymen of the Jadeites. Or maybe it had occurred to me, and I just
didn’t want to believe it. Humans are bullies to anyone who doesn’t fit into
their own limited little ideas of the world.

About Me

I'm Star Nova, and I like to tell stories. This blog used to be more topical, but then just became a place where I could easily hold my stories. I have several short stories and two big works in progress, as well as some old crap and some pending revisions OF some old crap.
I write in order to share how I see the world, from my own perspective. If you're here, you're probably here from Tumblr or Twitter. I hope you like my stories. And if you don't, I hope you at least read them before you decide that. (: